Broadband In Crisis: Does The US Need Regulation To Force Meaningful Competition?

from the two-internets dept

Susan Crawford believes telecommunications in America are going through the biggest crisis ever, and this is just as bad as the banking crisis was. Monday, at the Freedom 2 Connect conference, the Internet law scholar and former Special Assistant for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy at the White House, laid out what's wrong with broadband in America, hinting and what needs to be done to fix it. It's not going to be easy.

"The stakes are extraordinarily high, this has been an incremental crisis for a long time but now it's an actual crisis," said Crawford, whose book analyzing these issues, Captive Audience, will be published in November. The central issue is the so-called digital divide and what Crawford refers to as the "looming cable monopoly." Due to deregulation, which was predicated on the premise that
the free market and competition would protect consumers, cable companies have found themselves with an inordinate amount of power to control the Internet and broadband access while, at the same time, traditional phone companies like AT&T are struggling to keep up and veering towards wireless services.

To support her thesis, Crawford presented some stunning numbers. In the last two years, Comcast market share has grown from 16.3 million subscribers to 18.5, a 14 percent growth. Time Warner Cable has grown 10 percent, from 9.2 to 10.7 million customers. Meanwhile, DSL subscribers have plummeted: AT&T and Verizon market share is down 22 and 21 percent respectively.

So, while it's good to be Comcast, it's not good to be an American citizen. Without competition, there's
no drive to improve the service. The average speed of an Internet connection in the United States is
around 5Mbit/s. An astoundingly low number if you look at other western countries. South Korea, for
example, has an average of 50Mbit/s. And faster connections are starting to be implemented around the
world. One gigabit connections are available in countries like Japan, Portugal or Sweden and at much
better prices than in the U.S. – in Hong Kong, connecting at one gigabit per second costs $26 a month
while in Chattanooga, TN, it costs $350.

What does this mean to the average citizen? It means the United States are giving up their leadership.
Crawrford said this means “the next Google won't come from America.” And, even within U.S.
borders, there's a fundamental problem: you either pay premium for a mediocre service or you are left
behind.

“We end up with two Internets, two societies in America,” Crawford said to me in an interview.

One America does some tweeting and Facebook on their inferior, slower wireless devices. The other
America not only gets to enjoy video online, but they can also apply for jobs, do video-conferencing,
get an education online and, ultimately, live in the 21st century. Crawford argues that this digital divide
ends up creating inequality between the haves and have-nots in America.

The only solution, Crawford argues, is for the government to intervene and regulate. Internet access, particularly high-speed access, should be treated “as a utility, just as electricity, gas and water.” Doing
so would make the Internet a natural monopoly in which the government would provide the pipe and
guarantee equal opportunity of access to everybody.

It might not happen immediately, but Crawford hopes that, with her influence and that of other thinkers
like her, this will come to the forefront of the public discussion. She believes that, eventually, in every
district, there will be elected officials who understand and care about these issues. That will be when
we'll be able to look for a solution. "We make this a voting issue, that's how we fight back."

Reader Comments

We need regulation simultaneously with government spending on our infrastructure.. Sweden, S Korea and others have great Internet because their governments invest. Unfortunately we've got the Repubicans and Democrats.